Folk music will always be linked to politics as repression makes the best songwriters, people who really have something to say. " Don't worry be happy" also proves that the theory is true in reverse. Folk music in the Balkans as far as I could see when I was there, 8 years ago had been completely kidnapped by the state and was only available in expensive tourist restaurants where "real gypsies" who were not allowed to go anywhere played the same government approved sets night after night. Two friends and myself went into a bar in a small village well of not far from the Hungarian, Yugoslavian boarder and asked if we could play some music in the bar. The barmaid informed us that they normally watched Tele. In fact they had MTV on a huge screen all night. Lines of disillusioned middle aged blokes eating lard and watching scantily clad blond girl writhing around singing. Well the bar lady said it would be all right if we played in the garden. It did not take long before most of the bar was in the garden and then they decided to turn the TV off and we were invited back in and offered lard. Every one wanted to go to America (it may have been the scantily clad girls of maybe they were just sick of lard) A man who had left earlier returned with a dark looking bloke who listened attentively as we played. When I sang a Hungarian song I had learned, he began to cry. When we had finished the song, the man who had brought him to the bar told me that his friend played the fiddle so I gave him my fiddle to play. Now it was my turn to cry. He played only one turn and in it expressed entirely what it is to be repressed. To be not allowed to play folk music. Not long after the police arrived, brandishing guns and threatened to arrest everyone so we thanked the people for the lard and got on our way. As for the best song writers of the 20th Century, I'd say Jimmy Begin, Tit Willow and that bloke from Sieze the Day, but as you may not have ever heard anything by any of these people unless you have meet then in person, I'll go with Shane MacGowan, and Bob Marley, both lads with a lot to say.